China dismisses Dalai Lama's succession plan as "illegal"

BEIJING: An angry China on Monday said that any successor chosen by the 14th Dalai Lama would be "illegal", days after the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader asserted that he and not Beijing had the right to identify his next incarnation.

"There is a complete set of religious rituals and historical conventions in reincarnation of the Dalai Lama and a Dalai Lama identifying his own successor has never been the practice," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters here at a briefing.

"The title of Dalai Lama is conferred by the (Chinese) central government and is illegal otherwise," Hong said, reacting angrily to the Dalai Lama's statement on Saturday on the issue of his succession.

The 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winning monk had said that if he is to be reincarnated he will leave clear written instructions about the process.

He said in a statement that when he is "about 90" he will consult Buddhist scholars to evaluate whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue at all.